Another World

Last week I played hooky from school. As it turned out, I didn’t miss much – more snow days and two 2 hour delays.

I took a long overdue vacation trip to see my little girl Betsy. She graduated from college in May of 2007 and that June headed to Paraguay to honor her plan to serve in the Peace Corps. She signed on for an extra year as a coordinator and presently lives in the capital city of Asuncion. Her first two years were spent on assignment in the “campo” which translates to “out in the sticks”, where she was to assist the farm co-op and others with economic development.

She has been home once in 2 ½ years and will finish her obligation in September. I thought I owed it to her, before she leaves South America, to see first hand the life she has been living and the community she served. I wanted to personally thank the man and woman who served as her surrogate parents in the campo, Pablino and Racquel, for looking after my little girl.

After 3 planes and 29 hours of travel time I finally arrived in Asuncion.

I rented a car at the airport and after a good nights sleep, we headed to the campo. Betsy had organized a cookout to be held at her host parent’s home and we were in charge of picking up other Peace Corps volunteers who would be attending. We drove around 200 kilometers on a good highway to get from the city to the San Pedro district that was home to these folks.

Then it was time to round up the kids (as I call the volunteers – all in their 20s). Now I have fished some of the most remote trout streams of West Virginia. For 13 years I lived and worked in the most sparsely populated school district east of the Mississippi where the student population averaged 1.5 kids per square mile. I have never traveled dirt roads like this.

There were no rocks to speak of, just dusty red dirt. The base seemed solid enough and although there were ruts and washouts, there was plenty of traffic. There were lots of motorbikes, a few cars and trucks, and plenty of horse and ox carts. In what seemed like a 15 mile loop I picked up 3 kids, each at their little two room shacks, delivered them to the host family’s house and repeated the process once again on another network of dusty red roads to collect 4 more.

While we enjoyed a nice barbecue of tough Brahman beef it started to rain. It rained all afternoon. Eventually Betsy suggested we start taking the kids home, because it was well known that the public buses these folks depended on to get out to more populated areas, never run when it rains. Maybe that’s because driving on these red dirt roads gets treacherous when wet. I learned that was true.

My rental car was a well used Ford Explorer and it was questionable if the 4 wheel drive was functional. After 2 nail biting hours of slipping and slopping through the soup, I managed to get all the kids delivered back to their little cabins safely. We were just a mile from the hard road when a truck with a top heavy load of pineapples stopped in front of me. I eased around it, found myself on a severely sloped shoulder and in seconds we were hung up - immobile in the side ditch with only one wheel actually touching the road.

The rain had finally stopped and as we stepped out of the car and into the road we learned just how greasy slick that red dirt had become.

This whole experience will lead to a couple of stories worth sharing in the weeks to come, but let me close this one out by saying the Paraguan people are kind and generous. Many offered shelter while we awaited rescue. One truck tried to pull us free using an ancient rope offered by one of the neighbors. The rope broke twice. We offered to pay for the rope, but they laughed and said it was a grandfather rope with no strength left in it.

I would still be standing in that ditch with a forlorn look on my face if not for ol’ John Deere. That’s right. The local farm co-op owns a big green John Deere tractor and eventually Pablino came along and snatched us out of that hole. While watching that big green machine come over the hill, I couldn’t have felt any more rescued than if I were watching the arrival of the U. S. Marines. Memories of Paraguay will stay with me for a long, long time.